New Delhi : India will do everything in its power to “continue to enable” conditions in Afghanistan so that the people there are able to stand on their own feet and take their own decisions, a former Indian envoy to Kabul has said as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani heads to India next week on his maiden visit after assuming power in that violence-wracked country.
Jayant Prasad, addressing a round table, said that to help make Afghanistan self-reliant India will need “patience, perseverance and long term engagement” in that country that is emerging after decades of war.
India’s long term objective is that “Afghanistan will never be stable without resources, which can come only when the country becomes a hub for trade and transportation, becomes a crossroads between Central Asia, Iran, India and China”, Prasad said Wednesday evening, adding that “that’s why the Chinese presence there in a constructive way would be welcome” to India.
To a question on why Ghani has delayed visiting India, and has already paid visits to Pakistan and China, the former ambassador said that Ghani is “an Afghan patriot” and “we allow them space to do their own things.. We look at the big picture”.
At the roundtable on ‘Current Developments in Afghanistan: Policy Options for India’, held at the India International Centre, Prasad said that Ghani during a recent Pakistan visit landed at Rawalpindi, the General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army – the veritable power centre of Pakistan. According to him, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s advisor on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz was not aware that Ghani was going to “drive straight to the GHQ.
“He (Ghani) knew where the source of the problems (in Afghanistan) lay” and had reportedly remarked later, after conferring with Pakistan Army Chief, General Raheel Sharif, that he had “achieved in three hours what his predecessor could not do in thirteen.”
According to him, Afghan CEO Abdullah Abdullah, while attending a Pakistan Day function in Kabul as chief guest, had bluntly told the Pakistani envoy there in response to his speech that “you have not delivered what you promised to deliver”.
Prasad said that for India “our problem with Afghanistan is also related with our problems in Pakistan, because if Afghanistan goes down, with it, it will also take down Pakistan. .. which will create for us far greater headaches than we have today, that’s our stake in Afghanistan.”
Shakti Sinha, former Head of Governance, UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, said that India’s developmental assistance in Afghanistan “must continue and be guided by the priorities of the Afghan government”.
Addressing the roundtable, organized by think tank Society for Policy Studies (SPS), he said that India has “not done enough” in Afghanistan, and suggested that India should “commit a certain amount of money, not a large amount” towards Afghanistan budgetary support. “Funding projects is one thing, giving money to Afghanistan through its budget increases the credibility of the government in its own country,” he said.
According to Sinha, President Ghani is committed to strengthening the East-West corridor, which “is in India’s interest”. He said that the Indian envoy recently “gave a demarche to the Afghan government to be included in the Afghan-Pakistan trading path, which has delivered the first results. The Pakistan commerce minister announced that the Afghan trucks can go back from Wagah (India’s land border with Pakistan) carrying goods directly” when earlier they had to return empty.
Sinha said the Indian government should “consider underwriting efforts of the private sector to help the Afghan industry grow, to deliver employment and to deliver Indian development assistance better..Some method to take care of the risks would help”.
The roundtable was also addressed by Britta Petersen, Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, and Shanthie Mariet D’Souza , President and Founder, Mantraya, both regretting that India had not paid enough attention to strategic communication, through media and public diplomacy, to build on its enormous goodwill in that country.